Poor hubby is stuck in the middle.  He just doesn’t understand.  He thinks I just need to move to another room so EJ isn’t so bored.  What about her mother?  Moving to another room isn’t going to solve my moodyness.  I think I need the sun.

 Hubby usually has a TV, radio or something electronically noisy on.  Sometimes he will have the radio AND the TV on at the same time!  It’s like a symphony of chaos. He’s one of those types that has to have noise around him at all time.  Even when we are going to sleep he wants the TV on.  I’ve teased him about it a lot over the years.  He knows he does it but doesn’t apologize for it.  And I don’t expect him to.  It’s just his way of doing things.  What he does instead to accommodate me is, when the constant noise starts bugging me and I feel like my brain is about to melt and seep out my ear, I’ll tell him I want the TV off to go to sleep he will comply and not complain.  It’s not like he can’t fall asleep with it off, he just doesn’t want to.   And it’s not like the noise gets to me all the time.  I know the compromise is primarily on my part but as long as he doesn’t protest when I do want the noise maker off I’m happy.  Besides, there’s something wild and crazy about falling asleep to the History Channel.  Whoo, hoo.  I’m keepin’ my youth alive baby!   I will however draw the line at military/war shows to fall asleep to.  Listening to artillery explosions and machine guns firing just isn’t good for dream patterns.    

As if my personal space wasn’t already assaulted with multiple sound waves hitting me, now with EJ there is more.  I find myself sometimes, when Hubby’s not in the house, turning off the TV and/or radio hoping to find the silence I used to find before she came along.   Ha, ha!  That’s funny!  What’s even funnier is she will be sitting playing with her toys, all happy as she can be, and I will try to shush her sometimes because she’s making too many loud HAPPY sounds.   Ya right!  Ever try to ask a 6 month old to be quiet?   It’s like telling a volcano not to erupt.   And you would think I would be complaining about when she’s screaming her head off pissed because I took her toy guitar away from her, not when she’s content and happy.  (Stupid plastic guitar that WE gave her out of cereal box.  You would think it was constructed from the same corn syrup and sugar that the cereal was made out of it.  Can’t pry the damn thing out of her mouth sometimes. UGG!) Right now she’s particularly loud.  She’s “finding her voice” and loves to squeal as loud as she can.   Let me tell you, I’ve had lots of other mom’s comment on how high pitched she squeals and how loud she can get.  They can’t believe she can get that much sound of her little body.  Of course their children all were silent screamers.  They would just whimper Mozart when they were hungry or needed a clean butt.  Bath time is a favorite of EJ’s because she can squeal really loud and it echos in the tub.  She finds it funny.  I, however, am not as amused while I’m covering my ears hoping they don’t start bleeding.

So I’m sitting here in silence enjoying the candle I have lit on the coffee table, looking at the lights and smelling our big fat tree and loving the silence.   Forgive me if I cut this short.  The tapping on my keyboard is getting a bit too loud.

“Silent night……Holy Night…..All is calm……..”

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  Today we went and and chopped down our Christmas tree.   Ok, so we went to the big red and white tented tree city that pops up every year down the road.  Our tree is a BIG FAT 7 footer that is now filling the space we gave it to live in for the holiday season.  Some how we ended up with a deal on it.  I think they marked the price wrong.  Most of the 7 foot fat ones were at least 10 bucks more than this one.  EJ, Dear Hubby and I went round and round in circles under the big tent until EJ was ready to revolt.  You would think she would be excited about her first Christmas tree.  She’s 6 months now.  She should be able to have a vote on how big and fat the tree should be.  She’s the one who’s going to be crawling under it by the 25th.  But Nooooo, all she did was whine.  I know, we’re terrible parents finding her whimpers adorable.  We did manage to get a couple photos of her before she lost her grip.  She was wearing the cutest little santa hat.  I think she likes her hat but she didn’t like going that long with out a solid meal.  Juice in a sippy cup is not a meal. Ask her, she’ll tell you. 

As I went to the front of the tent to hunt down one of the college students that sells the trees, usually found out back in the employee area playing with the chain saws, to tell them that we found our perfect family tree, I discovered our perfect BIG FAT family tree.  Even better!  This one was sitting right next to the check out stand.  I have no clue why it was marked the way it was.  I didn’t want to ask.  I did ask the kid why the ticket was duck taped together and he said it was because some other family thought it was their perfect family tree and changed their minds.  Um, ok, I’ll take it!  Then I had to go back and get Dear Hubby who was where I left him stalking our perfect family tree to make sure no one else fell in love with it.   He rolled his eyes at me and asked me if I was sure this was the one…again.  Apparently I’d had already picked out a few too many perfect family trees.  But I assured him it was…THE ONE!  All Dear Hubby had to say was “Thank God”. 

Guess what happened!!  When we went to run our credit card their phone line went dead!   Just our luck.  We find the most perfect BIG FAT family tree and we can’t buy it.  I was ready to pee on it to make it mine while the sales kid was scratching the lice in his dread locks trying to figure out what to do next.  Finally he said just take it home and I’ll call you later and run your card.  WOW!  Can you believe it?  I was just shocked!  People just don’t do that any more.  I’m talking trust here.  How often can you hand over something to anyone, it doesn’t matter if it cost $1 or $100, and trust that they will pay later with out getting back ground info, personal identification info and collateral.  As I would say my next born child, or as Dear Hubby would say his left nut.  But this kid did.  He didn’t strike me as the unintelligent type.  College student.  Probably hasn’t seen a whole lot of negative in life yet but not stupid about it either.  I know my husband and I don’t exactly scream criminal standing there in our polo shirts and christmas hats but you never know…  We could be that perfect BIG FAT Christmas tree thieves that he didn’t get the memo about.   But he trusted us and we got to take our cranky daughter and our perfect BIG FAT tree home.  

It was several hours later that the tree kid called us about paying.  Dear Hubby didn’t see that he called for another hour.  When he told me that I pictured the poor kid sitting there crapping his pants thinking that he messed up good this time.  Can you imagine how relived he was when Dear Hubby called him back?   Merry Christmas kid.  You can still keep your faith in humanity.

We now have our perfect BIG FAT tree set up, still naked, in our living room.  It smells soooo good!  I wish I could describe the smell with something other than Pine-sol.  For me it just smells like Christmas.   

Smiles!

Sorry the picture is so red. This is what happens when your under a big red and white tent. You turn into a tomato.

This is our BIG FAT tree.

——–page break!———

Irony at it’s finest!!  So while I was downstairs in the kitchen feeling sorry for myself because I have too much to do and too much time to do it in I started hearing this pitiful squealing sound coming from our upstairs loft.  Then I heard my cat scrambling back and forth and sliding across the wood floor.  More pitiful squealing.  I go investigate before what ever it is wakes up the baby.  As I’m staring up the stairs contemplating letting my cat just finish off what ever she’s attacking I see a shadow fly by the ceiling.  While I was airing my woes my cat was catching her Thanksgiving dinner.  When I go upstairs the bird is sitting on the window sill with my cat preparing to launch.  I shoo her off, well kinda, she’s behind me scowling at me because I just ruined said Thanksgiving dinner.   By now the bird is so tired that it is just sitting there watching me while I open the window right next to it and pull the screen out.  Mind you the bird is not 6 inches away from me.  Does it know that I’m trying to save it?  It’s weird that’s it’s not trying to escape from me either.  After I get the window open I have to wave my hands at the bird to get it to fly away.  And it does.  Cute little guy.   He really has something to be thankful for today.